Notes for trust officers, private bankers and others concerned with estate and trust planning, from a Merrill Anderson Senior Editor and his retired mentor.

Saturday, December 13, 2014

James Brown's Disrespected Will

James Brown performing in Hamburg, Germany, February 1973.

This idea that you can just completely disregard the testator’s wishes is fine if we are going to live in a country where people don’t have a right to say what happens with their assets when they die.

– Virginia Meeks Shuman, Charleston School of Law

When the children and grandchildren don't like the terms of a will, things can get messy. The James Brown mess, The New York Times reports, is super sized. South Carolina seized his estate and wrote Brown a new will. The South Carolina Supreme Court overruled. Now what?